Landing Page Makeover Clinic #20: TantricSexforBusyCouples.com

This is another addition to our ongoing series of tutorials and case studies on landing pages that work.

Is it hot in here or just me?

Diana Daffner and her husband want to help people find a renewed sense of joy and connection in their intimate relationships through tantra. Their business, IntimacyRetreats.com, offers couples retreats throughout the year, but realizing not everyone can attend a retreat, they also want to promote their books and media products.

The URL referenced above is actually the “/shop page” off their main site. Diana would like to use the page as an independent landing page, as well. So let’s take a look and see what we can do to warm up product sales for this tantra-loving business couple.

The Goal: Increase sales of all products. (Some current sales may be being diverted to their Amazon listing.)

The Problem: Good traffic flow, email list of several thousand prospects, less than 2% actually buy.

The Maven’s 10-Point Critique

#1 — Treat this page as a standalone from the get-go.

If you want this page to be able to do its job properly, you need to think of it as a discrete entity — not just as an extension of your retreat offerings. It has to have all the usual landing page elements: a strong, emotionally-resonant headline, benefit-rich copy, attractive images, sweeteners like testimonials and purchase guarantees — and a clear call to action.

#2 — If you want to sell tantric-sex info products, your banner and messaging have to speak to tantric sex and not intimacy retreats.

You have too many taglines in the banner. I do like, however, “Transform your relationship into a love affair” and would highlight it, perhaps moving it into a pre-head position. I suggest you make the banner a little shorter to allow for more copy below. And yes, you have to say “Tantric Sex for Busy Couples” upfront. I like the product image and might use it in the banner rather than the one you’re using now.

#3 — Copy needs to reflect the original mindset of the visitor.

If visitors are coming to your home page looking for “couples workshop” then they’re not thinking DIY tantra at home. They may decide after they arrive that a workshop isn’t what they want right now and may look at other information, but it wasn’t top of mind originally.

Therefore your landing page copy has to acknowledge that in some way and position the products as a “If you can’t come to us, we’ll come to you” alternative.

#4 — If you want to sell information products, think about testing a pay-per-click campaign.

As noted above, your organic search visitors are knocking at your door looking for workshops. I’d strongly suggest testing a pay-per-click campaign based on the relevant keywords and phrases folks might use to find tantric sex info products for couples. Although I’d probably recommend testing different landing pages per male and female campaigns, one solid landing page that hits all the core points would be a good place to start.

#5 — Articulate the “big idea” behind your product offerings.

Tantra is a sort of “out there” practice to many people. Maybe they’ve heard about the supposed multi-hour tantric sessions between Sting and his wife, Trudy Styler, or that it requires lots of strange, uncomfortable positions — and what’s up with all the breathing and staring?

Tantric sex isn’t weird — it’s as easy as gazing into each other’s eyes and breathing. Everyone can do it, no matter how old or out of shape. Every relationship — from newlyweds to couples celebrating their golden anniversaries — can benefit from it. And we’re going to show you how to use it to regain your passion for your partner.

That’s the conceptual “big idea” umbrella under which all your specific products reside.

#6 – Consider the different personas — the different needs — of your visitors when crafting your copy.

My guess is your main site gets roughly three kinds of visitors:

Happy couples who view a retreat as a special gift or vacation for themselves;

Relatively happy couples who want to spice up their sexual relationship; and

Unhappy couples who are looking for a way of fixing things.

Your product buyers are coming from groups #2 and #3, especially #3. Since pain relief is more of a motivator for action than pleasure-seeking, my guess is that most of these visitors are coming from the “fix” mindset. Men want to fix the sex and women want to fix the relationship, and maybe tantra is a solution to their mutual problem. (Thinking broadly, of course, because that’s what I do. Pun intended.)

Your headline/intro copy needs to promote your products as a smart, thoughtful, and effective first-step to solving intimacy issues. Copy needs to highlight “pain points” that both men and women would relate to and resonate with through their respective desire/gender lenses.

#7 — Ratchet up the sense of urgency.

Why does your prospective customer need this now? What is happening (or not) in their lives that they’re brought to searching for information to help them connect more passionately, genuinely with each other — and why get it from you?

Your intro and individual sales copy has to stay on point that what you’re offering will help relieve, solve, heal and help couples reconnect with each other. Make sure all copy is written in the ‘you’, the second person, to underscore your connection with the prospective buyer.

Click image for larger view

#8 — Trim the product copy to its scannable essence. Don’t use links to send visitors to other pages.

Your bulleted copy is good, it’s the paragraphs that are wordy and a little too “woo-woo,” especially for those whose relationships might be a little shaky and who might be unsure about tantra in general. Speak to your visitors in clear, clean prose that instills hope and confidence that you have what they need.

#9 — Redesign the page from the ground up.

Actually, I’d strongly suggest redesigning your entire site from the ground up. It looks amateurish and when it comes to folks spending, especially when every dollar counts, a polished and professional look will serve all your interests well.

Regarding the landing page, all the same good advice I generally offer applies here, too.

Get rid of all unnecessary distractions. If using a content management system for your site platform, then think about creating a static landing page that incorporates all the best practices. I’d suggest a two-column format — left wide, right narrow. Use the right column for testimonials, order details, and satisfaction guarantees, etc. The wider column handles the big marketing load. Use Verdana or Georgia for your font, black as your main font color, and use color for accent only. Clean up your product images. Make sure your images/content elements are balanced for a pleasing appearance.

You want to get the bulk of the key content in the first screen. Push your product shots left and add order buttons to the right with pricing and sale info. (You want a call to action in every screen.) Do get rid of the awful red highlighting. Also, for the main product and the CD, put the audio player either under the cover image or above the order button. Provide a meaningful caption to encourage folks to click and listen.

#10 – Use pop-up windows to provide additional information and still keep visitors on the page.

Right now you have “learn-more” links for each product that take them off the page to another longer product page. I don’t think this does you any more good than the shorter, more concise copy you have here. So if you want to add more info without making the copy longer, use the link to a pop-up window with whatever you think will aid the visitor’s ability to say yes to tantra and to a purchase.

I’d also think about using an exit pop-up to offer a sweetener — free shipping, perhaps — or to ask them for their name and email address in exchange for a free chapter, free music, or some other taste of your products. I’d create a second prospect list of potential product buyers (as opposed to just adding these names to your current list) and market accordingly.

My thanks to Diana Daffner for her patience and support of Heifer International. Look for my next makeover in approximately 4 weeks.

Want to get a future Copywriting Maven landing page makeover?

Got a landing page that’s more poop than pop? Willing to share with Copyblogger readers? Prepared to put a little of your own “skin in the game” for a Maven Makeover? Then follow your click to Maven’s Landing Page Makeover page for all the details.

I’m booked for gratis “Heifer” critiques until 01/16/2010. If you’re interested in a private critique/makeover or other services, please email me directly.

Roberta Rosenberg

Roberta Rosenberg is the Director of Marketing & Social Media for the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC.) She also teaches copywriting for the American Writers and Artists Institute (AWAI) and MarketingProfs. Find her @CopywriterMaven on Twitter and at LinkedIn.

I am loving, loving this series. I love how you pay attention to the details. Cranking out copy and throwing up landing pages is one thing. Competently tweaking the details to maximize results is next level stuff. You’re giving away huge value here!

Christian – thank you. It’s easy to slap together copy and stock images. The devil – and the delight – is in the details. For the same amount of time and $$$ invested, why not get the maximum from the effort?

Thanks Roberta for the excellent critique. I don’t think my landing page is poop but you might disagree I learnt something today about treating the landing page as a stand-alone entity and will try to tweak a little. It’s amazing how much we can do wrong when we think we’re doing the right thing. I’m not a fan of pop-ups; find them irritating, but they do have their uses as I see. Looking forward to the upcoming post. I’m sure it would be interesting. See you in four weeks…

@David, most of the time I agree with you on pop-ups. But my one exception is an exit pop from a sales page, which is what Roberta is pointing to here. Otherwise you’ve lost them anyway, so I personally feel ok about making one last offer.

It’s tricky–people use pop-ups because they do increase response quite a bit. But you don’t want to sacrifice the relationship either. For myself I try to remember that I’m not supposed to be designing around what bugs me or pleases me, but around what will convey my message to my customer and lead to a sale, either now or down the line. And landing pages are very much about “OK, it’s time to make the sale now.”

@Shane – I’ve seen similar products but this is the first time I’ve seen as part of a WP blog. I think it does a pretty good job at organizing the usual steps to a long-form sales letter. I like the headline kickstarts, too. The ‘each section gets its own post’ thing is a little kludgy so I’d probably write the letter offline and copy and paste segments in. The letter it produces is clean and attractive for the genre. But this letter still needs to be written. The form includes BIG EMPTY BLOCKS that need to be filled.

If I was in a time-crunch, something like this would be attractive since I wouldn’t have to worry about getting it designed/coded. I could write and it looks good.

But like all good templates, it’s a helper. Someone still needs to the right kind of writing to generate the lead or close a sale.

@David, Sonia – The hardest part of my job is keeping my personal aesthetics out of the client’s business and focus on my client’s goals. The ‘too-many-years-to-count’ DM’er in me says you find out what works and do more of it. As Sonia so eloquently stated it, landing pages are all about ‘it’s time to make the sale now.’ An exit pop-up in this case says, “Not ready to buy just yet? No problem, let’s stay in touch and here’s a little something for you before you leave.”

It’s all about testing, finding out what works, and refining from there. Marketing is always a process-centered activity.

Fantastic makeover as always Roberta. It never ceases to amaze me that there is ALWAYS something new to learn from these.

In many respects a lot of this month’s points are very subtle, such as thinking about what your visitor is actually searching for and possible state of mind. I’m not sure how the different landing pages for gender will work though – unless Google can differentiate?

I seriously think I need to go back to the drawing board for my landing page copies now…

@Pat – thanks, as always, for the kind comments. I was thinking gender-specific landing pages as an extension of a PPC campaign which I recommended they explore. So, if someone responds to “How to Get Your Wife All Fired-Up” in a PPC ad, we direct them to page for hubbies, and vice versa. You might be able to get more gender-specific in organic pages, but that would be far more difficult to control.

Dr. Smythe, Jing is neat, but having my files stored on screencast.com doesn’t appeal to me. It’s like the WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org debate. With Camtasia you have the source files on your own machine to do with what you will, and you can output them to various formats, too. If you plan to get serious about screencasting, Camtasia is worth every penny. If you don’t, Jing will do.

I would also add that this site should have the header image precached (if it remains after the makeover), since it takes a while to load even on a fast connection. It makes the site feel more put together when the header shows first, and the rest takes a second to load, not the other way around. It eliminates the feeling that you are left hanging.

Roberta, I so appreciate the time and energy you put into my makeover. Some day I hope to show you not only a new and improved landing page – based on your suggestions – but a whole new site entirely. Having just entered the 21st century by purchasing my first Blackberry, I’m wondering now if sites should be more specifically designed to be seen on phones. It feels like a whole new world.

Excellent and honest crit. I thought it was brilliant when you said “I’d strongly suggest redesigning your entire site from the ground up. It looks amateurish…”

I understand that the words are key to conversion but the look of this site is a huge turn off at the moment. There are still a lot of sites like this though. I classify them as ‘hard sell websites’ with 20 screens of text to scroll through and blue text.

But since there are so many sites like that out there I was beginning to think they must actually sell stuff that way.

Having read your crit I’m now hoping that they’re set to become a thing of the past, like bowler hats and spats.

I hope the lovely tantric sex people can find a web design team who will make their site look as professional, knowledgeable and sexy as they are. If they follow all your recommendations there will be a huge upturn in sales of all their products.

Really great advice in an excellent portrayed blog. I think that many people can read this and take what you’ve provided and apply it to there own website.
It’s wonderful you use this opportunity to inform others of your services as I think so many companies want to know where they can get good advice that really means something.

Great looking feedback! When I worked for an agency about a decade ago, we used to do something similar called a Point of View (POV) report. Although the POVs were free, our clients almost always paid us to implement the recommendations we made.

These are some great tips. They definitely need to have more copy for the product as well as what you said, having it as a standalone page and not all those others on there. It’s just confusing to the person landing on the page.

I’d also ditch some of the blue copy. My opinion though. With the tips you shared Roberta, I see them generating a killer response now (10% or more with targeted traffic).

@Jenny – I can tell people what I do or show them what I can do. There’s a lot of work in the showing but the benefit is huge for readers like yourself. I like helping/teaching. It’s my Virgo ascendant nature.

Excellent work once again. These critiques are so helpful for newbies looking to tighten up their copy. I would even make another suggestion that they give away an entire chapter or tantric lesson as a way to grab an email address. Even though they have their own list, it’s good to keep giving on occasion to keep people interested in what you are offering.

How do you feel about 2nd chance or last chance offers? I think they are annoying but I have bought based upon the benefit of getting it cheaper when Im about to leave a page and get a deep discount for buying now. And… In #1 you mentioned “testimonials”. Are these testimonials still legal? According to FTC guidelines?

I think last chance offers can be effective depending on what is being sold. I don’t think it’s a good install for this site, however. Legitimate testimonials from genuine customers/clients who do not stand to gain from their testimonial (i.e. an affiliate) are perfectly fine. For all others, transparency of purpose and relationship should always be paramount.

Roberta, you really are brilliant! I had the pleasure of interviewing Diana for my former marriage blog so I know how much good she has to offer the world. How great to see she’ll benefit from your smarts!

I’m also getting a lot from this crit. Like Diana, I talk about one of those ‘weird topics’- wedding drama so it’s enormously helpful to hear how build trust and acceptance of a new concept. Every bit of good advice is going into my new site! And, I’m hoping to have my own makeover someday soon.

Always grand to hear from you, Dina. We build ultimate trust when we make ultimate sense. That’s the 2-3 second window our visitors afford us. When you’re ready for a site makeover, I promise to make room on the schedule.

Great suggestions! I don’t see the “after” visual…is this the right link to the makeover article?

While I understand it’s time-consuming to do a full PSD, the article could have more “oomph” if there was even a SnagIt of what you think it would look like. Otherwise, it seems more like a commentary than a makeover.

Wow, that would be so helpful, a sketch showing what it might look like. Yes, I’m the ‘client’ here… and no, I haven’t yet implemented this wonderful advice from Roberta. I appreciate everyone’s comments and look forward to doing more than just the tiny tweak I’ve managed so far!